Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have taken the world by storm. NFTs are being issued by some of the world’s top brands including Adidas, Coca-Cola, Louis Vuitton, McDonald’s, Nike, Pepsi, Samsung, and many more.

The problems

The biggest problem with many conventional NFTs is that they do not give holders any intellectual property or other monetizable rights.

A number of conventional NFTs are plagiarized works, fake collections, spam, and frauds. And then there are rug-pulls. And wash trading — illegally inflated trade volumes by constant buying & selling within a group.

The solution

The Hybrid Finance Blockchain (HYFI) announces Hybrid NFTs — a special category of NFTs that come with a perpetual copyright license to use the NFT for commercial purposes.

Hybrid NFTs are thoroughly verified and hence the risk of plagiarized works, fake collections, spam, frauds, and rug-pulls are almost zero.

Hybrid NFTs are perfect for artists, authors, movie makers, musicians, and other content creators.

What is Fungibility?

Consider the balance in your mobile wallet (say Rs. 10,000). Is there any difference between each of these rupees? No, there isn’t. So we can say that this digital money is “fungible” — every rupee is exactly the same as another rupee.

Is every 500-rupee note identical in value? Most people would say yes. But it’s not! An older 500-rupee note is worth zero — remember demonetization? Then there are people who collect notes with “special numbers”.

I collect 1-rupee notes and you would be surprised to hear that some 1-rupee notes sell for over Rs. 10,000 each!

So, we can say that physical currency notes are “non-fungible”. Diamonds and physical art are also “non-fungible”.

The concept of NFTs

To understand what a non-fungible token (NFT) is, let’s take an example. Sanya is an artist who creates a bunch of manga ink on paper drawings. She sells them online as well as at a physical art gallery. But she can sell each drawing only once because, hey, it’s a physical drawing.

She can also create multiple reprints and sell them. Each reprint is identical. So if there are very few official reprints, the price can be high. If there are many reprints the price will be very low. That’s the law of scarcity at work. We are usually ready to pay more for things that are rare.

But how would a buyer know how many reprints are in existence?

That’s where NFTs come in. Sanya can release digital copies of her drawings on the blockchain in the form of non-fungible cryptocurrencies. Because of the blockchain’s inherent transparency, any buyer can see how many digital copies are actually in circulation. And anyone can see who owns how many digital copies.

Wait, there’s more. When you “buy” a digital version of a manga from an artist you only get the right to use it for personal viewing. That’s because the artist holds the copyright over the manga. But in an NFT, the artist can grant you special licenses e.g. the right to print the manga on t-shirts and make money by selling those t-shirts. Now, isn’t that cool?

How Hybrid NFTs work

Hybrid NFTs are a special category of NFTs that come with a perpetual copyright license to use the NFT for commercial purposes.

Let’s take some examples…

1. An author can sell translation rights in his book through Hybrid NFTs. I’ve written the Crypto Playbook in English and I can create Hybrid NFTs which give the rights to the NFT holder to translate my book into Spanish and sell the translated books.

2. An artist can allow NFT holders to use her creation (say a cartoon character) as a logo for their business.

3. A movie director can crowdfund her next movie by selling Hybrid NFTs which give holders a slice of the copyright of the movie. This includes a slice of lifetime profits from the movie!

4. A musician could issue Hybrid NFTs for crowdfunding his next album. The NFT holders are entitled to a slice of lifetime earnings from the music.

What next?

If you are an artist, author, movie maker, musician, or other content creator, get in touch with us at team@hyfiblockchain.com or connect with us on social media:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hyfiblockchain/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyfi_blockchain

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hyfi_blockchain

Telegram: https://t.me/hyfi_blockchain

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiX0SHwusmqtacuadeyh22g

Announcing the birth of Hybrid NFTs was originally published in Blockchain Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.